Specialist medics help slash Rotherham waiting lists

They have been credited with helping to clear 860 people from Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust waiting lists since October.

Rotherham was among 20 areas to benefit from the initiative, ordered by Health Secretary Wes Streeting, to help communities with high levels of economic inactivity.

The team in Rotherham supports the work of the trust, to help ensure more care is delivered, more quickly, than would otherwise be possible.

Leading clinicians were selected to head up each of the 20 teams, and they have been introducing more productive ways of workings.

That means the health service locally can get through more patient treatment sessions.

Efficiences have included looking again at the way operating theatres are run, to minimise time wasted between procedures.

The aim is to benefit both residents and the economy by getting people’s illnesses cured more quickly, so they can get back into work.

The success of the work means that similar teams will now be rolled out in other parts of the country.

Rotherham MP Sarah Champion has praised the initiative and said: “I am delighted to see waiting lists falling in Rotherham.

“Behind these statistics are local residents, who have been dealing with pain and illness for months, or even years, on the the record NHS waiting lists that rocketed under the Tories.

“Of course, the lists are still too high, but day by day they are falling as Labour delivers on their promises, and I am so pleased to see this benefitting the people of our town,” she said.

Mr Street said: “The investment and reform this Government has introduced has already cut NHS waiting lists by 193,000 but there is much more to do.

“By sending top doctors to provide targeted support to hospitals in the areas of highest economic activity we are getting sick Brits back to health and back to work.

“I am determined to transform health and social care so it works better for patients - but also because I know that transformation can help drag our economy out of the sluggish productivity and poor growth of recent years,” he said.